The uprising in the Arab region was not only a revolt against dictatorship, but also against inequality, unemployment, poverty and corruption. Therefore, ‘social justice’ was one of the most widely used slogans by protesters to express the drastic deterioration of their socioeconomic situation.
Social injustice is not a feature of developing countries or an outcome of corruption, as the international financial institutions (IMF and WB) tend to argue. It is rather induced by the neoliberal economic policies, which lack of developmental, social and environmental dimensions, and caused a series of economic deficiencies, such as unemployment, declining local production and informal economy.
Social injustice refers not only to income and wealth disparity between women and men or between rural and urban populations, but also to unequal access to resources, job opportunities, education and health care. Radicalization of society and religious- and ethnical-based extremism are common outcomes of social injustice.
Against this background, the seminar will discuss the economic policies in selected Arab countries from social justice perspective and debate alternatives for more social justice.